


when one is cut (the other will bleed)

by icyshark



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, Divorce, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Fix-It, Horror, I love my children but I love torturing them more, Multi, Past Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, Suicide Attempt, Twins-centric, Wendigo, past Jessica/Beth Washington, past Jessica/Josh Washington - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 21:05:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14120805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icyshark/pseuds/icyshark
Summary: AU. The night of the prank, Hannah falls into the mines after something drags Beth back onto the cliff. A month later, Hannah is found. Beth is not.Hannah navigates her life without her twin, half alive, until a strange message arrives: Beth survived, and she needs Hannah's help.





	when one is cut (the other will bleed)

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is heavily inspired by I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson. It's sort of a habit for me to start fics and never finish them. I hope that isn't the case for this one, because I love this premise. Please comment and kudos if you enjoy!
> 
> Huge trigger warning in the first chapter for attempted suicide and mentions of Hannah's eating habits.

_in every set of twins, there is one angel, one devil_

 

The silver rescue blanket hangs limply from Hannah’s shoulders, crinkling every now and then from the air pumping through the vent in the ceiling. Hannah is carved from glass; she does not move an inch. Josh can hear it through the tinny speakers on the other side of the police interrogation room. He feels numb.

Two hours and seventeen minutes. That’s how long it has been since Hannah was found, safe but starving down in the crumbling mines on Blackwood Mountain. Three weeks and four days. That is how long she and Beth have been missing. Beth is still gone. It feels surreal, like a half-remembered dream. Josh can’t say this aloud, won’t say it; it feels like if he does, the spell will be broken and his little sister will blow away like ashes in the wind.

His mother, Melinda, is next to him, quietly weeping while his father is talking to the Blackwood police chief outside. They gave Hannah a glass of water that she’s hardly touched. She looks like a corpse. She looks like a ghost.

Bob and the chief come into the interrogation room: Hannah and the Washingtons are free to go. Hannah has given her statement. The best thing for the family to do right now is go home and give her the care she needs.

How could they leave? How could they go home when Beth was still gone? Hannah didn’t see anything. One moment they were hanging there, on the edge of the cliff, and the next moment, Beth’s hand was wrenched away from hers and she was falling into the mineshaft. She said it felt like someone ripped her hand away, and when she looked up as she fell, her twin was nowhere to be seen.

They exit the other room and meet Hannah and Bob in the hallway. Hannah is in a wheelchair – she broke her femur in the fall. She reaches out for Josh with weak, skinny arms and he drops to his knees to pull her in close.

“We can’t go home,” she whispers into his chest, shaking her head. “We can’t leave without her.”

Josh holds her tighter, kissing the top of her head. A lot of her hair has fallen out. What remains is dirty and brittle. “I know, Han. I don’t want to leave either.”

Bob and Melinda are speaking to the police. Hannah is going to be transported to a hospital in Los Angeles for a few weeks of intensive care. After that, if she shows decent recovery, she can go back to school to finish her senior year.

Alone. Without Beth. Without a piece of her.

Josh can’t even imagine. In that moment, he hates his parents. He hates every person on earth except his starving baby sister and her missing twin.

* * *

The world has been shifted on its side, and Hannah has toppled while everything else stays right side up.

Hannah floats through the hallways of her high school like a shadow, still limping a little while her snapped femur seals itself back together. Sometimes she taps her fingernails along her thigh and pretends she can hear the metal clanging inside. Her hair grew back, but she’s barely gained any weight at all. She can’t seem to eat. Nothing goes down, nothing stays down. Her bones rattle in her wax paper skin.

Everyone looks at her now. The rumor mill, with its ruthless efficiency, wasted no time circulating the fact that Hannah thought she wasn’t alone down in those mines. People whisper that she’s lost her mind, that she thought she saw monsters, that she talks to herself just like her crazy brother, that she thinks she can talk to Beth.

“She’s _dead_ ,” they say, grinning ugly grins. Faces with no eyes. “Hannah’s crazy. It’s so sad.”

They don’t care about her, or Beth, and they’re wrong. None of them have twin sisters. None of them understand.

It’s been almost three months since the night of the prank. The school year is almost over now. Hannah was an exemplary student, so she’ll still graduate on time. Teachers give you a pretty good break on grades when you go missing and almost die, as it turns out.

Sam is excited that they’ll get to walk together. Hannah doesn’t want to tell her that she doesn’t want to limp across that stage, not if Beth’s name isn’t called before hers. But it won’t be, because Beth is gone.

Not dead, just gone. Hannah can’t seem to find her when she tries, but Beth always finds her.

Hannah stands in front of her locker, staring at her textbooks as the late bell rings for fourth period.

 _You have to go to class, Han,_ Beth’s voice says, rolling through her mind like a cool wave. _You don’t get to just check out. Please, try._

Hannah doesn’t want to try. Hannah is angry. Angry that Beth is hiding from her for the first time in their entire existences. It feels like a betrayal.

 _I’m not betraying you_ Beth’s voice chimes again. _I told you, I’m waiting. You have to trust me._

Hannah sighs. As if she has any other choice. Beth is her protector, has been since they shared a womb together, shared a life source. They still do.

She gives up and goes to class. When she arrives, Mr. Lee gives her a sympathetic grimace and lets her take her seat without comment. When will everyone stop treating her like a spider’s web, fragile and dangerous? She frowns. Probably when she stops looking so fucked up. Like that will happen. None of these people have ever had to live without half of themselves.

Class passes like sand through an hourglass, smooth and monotonous. Hannah doesn’t pay attention. She’s locked in a memory, in the lost feeling of freezing stone and ice underneath her, surrounding her. It happens when she gets lonely, when she feels too far away from Beth. She’s spirited away, back to that mine shaft, hearing the screeches of something hunting for her, shivering in Beth’s pink coat and praying that something will find her; death or rescue, she isn’t picky.

Sam’s warm hand on her shoulder brings her back.

“Hannah,” she says gently, drawing her back to herself. “Class is over now. It’s time for lunch.”

Hannah takes her hand, and the two of them return to their shared locker for their lunches. Sam has a nutritionally-dense, vegan lunch as always. Hannah has a plain bagel and cream cheese. She’ll probably only be able to eat half. Sam never says anything, which Hannah is grateful for. She hears enough of it from her mother.

They eat (Sam eats) in silence while Hannah thinks.

Her parents feel like strangers to her now. Melinda looks at her and sees Beth. Bob looks at her and sees a ghost. At least she has Josh. When she was still in recovery, it was Josh that took care of her. He made her tea, helped her shower and go to the bathroom when she still couldn’t walk, held her in his arms when she cried so hard she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

He’s the only one who believes her about the noises she heard, the shadows she saw, in the mines, and he’s the only one who believes her that Beth is still alive. Even Sam has given up.

“I love you, Hannah,” Sam says quietly, stirring her brown rice and beans. It’s obvious she means it.

Hannah sighs. “I love you.” She means it, too.

Her eyes wander and land on a butcher paper sign, wilting on the wall like a sad, dead flower. It’s for the fundraising campaign, a search and rescue for the twins, spearheaded by the President and his First Lady Mike and Emily. Some of their friends, like Chris, Ashley, and Sam, stayed in Alberta to help the search efforts on the ground. Others flew back to sunny L.A. as fast as the airplanes could carry them. Hannah hates them all for pretending they’re doing it for anything other than the cannibalizing guilt she sees eating them all inside.

They’re all wasting inside, like she did when she was alone in that cave, like she still is for reasons she’s afraid to explore. They’re all afraid too. Afraid of themselves, but afraid of her too. Even as Mike and Emily lead assemblies, go on the announcements and hold bake sales on behalf of her missing sister, they won’t even look at Hannah. They hide in each other.

Hannah only sees Jessica when they run into each other buying Vyvanse from Ashley. It’s bad, she knows, but the comedown is better than Adderall and it isn’t like she’s eating or sleeping anyway.

Jessica has her own demons to battle. Hannah can see them, churning like an inky sea behind her eyes. She feels guilty for orchestrating the prank, but she’s angry too that Hannah is here and Beth is gone. Beth wasn’t even the target; by right, it should be Hannah who is gone, and Jess’ best friend who is here. In Jess’ eyes, Hannah sees Beth’s reflection. It’s why Jess won’t look at her.

“Want me to walk you to fifth?” Sam asks, rising to throw her garbage in the trash.

Hannah nods wordlessly. Has it already been forty minutes? She raises her thin hand and Sam takes it in hers, pulling her to her feet and holding on as they head down the hallway.

Sam is the best person Hannah knows, other than Josh. She doesn’t let her guilt eat her like everyone else does. She doesn’t let it force her away from Hannah; if anything, it’s drawn her closer. Hannah is Sam’s responsibility now. It has become a holy mission for Sam to steward her to the end of high school, to keep her alive as long as she can. Sam couldn’t protect the twins on the night of the prank, so now she spends her life making up for it. It is penance, but not punishment.

She’s wrong. She should feel punished. She should feel cursed. It’s how Hannah feels, like a walking omen, like a miasmic force of entropy wading through the halls of her high school on two skinny legs. A devil.

Beth would have been a better survivor, the better twin to return home. She was more popular, prettier, and stronger. If she were in Hannah’s place, she’d probably be back in track already, broken femur be damned. Beth never slowed down, and she never stopped. She never gave up.

 _Obviously_ , Beth’s ringing voice declares, crashing around in Hannah’s head like waves. She’s angry. _Stop acting like I’m dead_.

Hannah frowns as she and Sam pass the enormous mural the senior art students collaborated on in Beth’s honor. Beth’s face emerges from explosions of color, surrounded by butterflies. They used her Facebook profile picture for reference. Hannah hates it.

It’s a bad habit, but she can’t help it; she imagines how it would be if their positions were reversed. Maybe they wouldn’t even paint a mural for Hannah. People didn’t love her like they loved Beth. If they did paint her, Beth would hate it so much she might just paint over it herself. They never cared about Hannah, she would say. They don’t care that she’s gone. They don’t get to see her face unless they’re looking at mine.

“I hate that thing,” Sam says, scowling at the mural. Hannah smiles.

The rest of the day passes slowly and all at once, Sam shepherding Hannah from class to class and then finally back to her car to drive Hannah home. She can probably drive herself now, but Sam won’t let her. Sometimes Sam needs to help Hannah more than Hannah needs her to help, it seems.

Sam’s Prius pulls into the driveway of the Washington McMansion, and she puts it in park.

“Can I come in with you? I haven’t seen Melinda in a while,” she asks. Her smile is small and sad. She can’t smile at Hannah anymore without her eyebrows drawing together.

Hannah nods. “I don’t know if she’s home, but you can come in and hang out.”

Hannah punches in the code on the door and it swings open, chirping happily from the little speaker of the security system. The house, as it always does now, feels hollow. She and Josh are living inside a cicada shell, flimsy and ready to topple at a moment’s notice.

A bright yellow sticky note is stuck to the wall by the stairs. Melinda’s crisp, fluid handwriting imparts a message:

_Nana,_

_You got some mail today. Left it on your bed. Sam if you are reading this: hello, dear!_

_Love, Mom_

Sam laughs lightly. “Are we that predictable?”

Hannah wants to smile back, but her face feels frozen. It feels like something is holding her nose, and numbness is spreading out from the center of her face like ice. Something is wrong. She can feel it like a cold stone in her heart. Sam doesn’t feel it. Hannah takes slow, sipping breaths and plucks the note off the wall, climbing the stairs to her room.

Air creeps out from under Beth’s door and tickles her ankles. She tries and fails to ignore it, just like she does every time. She knows it isn’t the wind, that it’s Beth reaching out to her in the only way she can right now, and that makes her angry.

The girls enter Hannah’s room and descend on the bed. Sam lies sideways across it, staring at the butterfly mobile spinning slowly on the ceiling. Hannah sits, gently lifting a small, dirty envelope from her pillowcase. There is no return address, but she recognizes a Canadian stamp.

Her heart starts hammering in her ears, beating with such force that her hands shake with each pump of her blood. She can hardly get the envelope open she’s trembling so badly. Finally, she rips it open and a tightly folded letter falls out. Her name is written in Beth’s neat print.

A tiny scream leaves her lips, and she drops the letter and the torn envelope to the floor. Sam sits up in alarm.

“Han, what is it?”

Hannah cups her face in her hands, breathing hard. Tears fall before she can stop them, and she points to the letter.

“Beth,” is all that she manages before she can’t breathe anymore.

Sam scrambles to pick up the letter, reads some of it silently to herself, and gasps.

“Holy shit,” she breathes. “’Hannah Banana,’” she starts, reading the letter aloud.

_Told you I wasn’t dead. I hate to have to do this, but I need you to wait just a little longer for me. It will be hard to wait, but I have a plan, and I need you to help me see it through. Tell Josh, and Sam too, if you trust her. I need you to come back to the lodge this winter, and bring everyone with you. There’s something there I need your help with, all of you. I can’t tell you anything now. He doesn’t even know I’m writing you this. I risked everything to get this note to you. I love you so much, Nana. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be here, waiting for you, until next year._

_All my love,_

_Beth_

Sam stops reading, tears running down her cheeks. Hannah is motionless, hardly breathing, staring at the letter in Sam’s hand.

“What does she mean, she ‘told you’ she wasn’t dead?” Sam whispers accusingly, holding the letter by her face. “You knew this whole time?”

Hannah shakes her head and covers her face with her hands. “It’s not like that. I knew, sort of, but not really. Not for sure. I thought I was just crazy.”

Sam says nothing. The words are bubbling up in Hannah’s chest like gas and suddenly she’s saying more at once than she has in months.

“She talks to me sometimes,” she says, then shakes her head. “Or, not talks to me, but… reaches out to me, somehow. I didn’t know she was alive but I could feel her inside of me somewhere still. It’s why I can’t look at that fucking mural, or look any of our friends in the eye. It’s why I can’t sleep, why I can’t eat, why I can’t do _anything_ anymore.”

Her voice cracks. “I knew, I knew this whole time that something was wrong, that we shouldn’t have left without her, that we should have kept looking but we just got on the plane and left her there! She’s still alive and we abandoned her! Can’t you see how that was killing me inside?”

The letter falls from Sam’s hand and settles on the floor like a fallen leaf. She lowers herself down onto the bed next to Hannah with the same delicate motion, not daring to touch her.

“I’m sorry, Han,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. You’re not crazy.”

 “No,” Hannah sighs. “Maybe I am, and maybe it doesn’t matter. But my sister is alive, Sam. Beth is alive.”

Sam stands again. “We have to tell the cops. Like, now.”

“No!” No, no, no. Hannah shoots to her feet and grips Sam’s hand tightly. “No, we can’t do that.”

Sam’s expression darkens like storm clouds. “What are you talking about? Look at this,” she says, snatching the letter off the floor. “’He doesn’t even know I’m writing you this?’ It sounds like someone kidnapped her, Hannah. She’s in trouble.” Fear makes her voice quake.

Hannah shakes her head. “Wait, and trust me, please. Read it again,” she says. She watches Sam’s eyes dart quickly across the page. “She doesn’t tell us to get help, she tells us to _wait_. Whatever situation she’s in, she wants to be there, at least for now.”

Sam is silent, unconvinced.

“I know my sister like I know my own mind,” Hannah continues, fighting the urge to feel indignant at Sam’s disbelief. “Better, maybe. If she wanted us to go to the police she would have said so. She probably would have tried to contact them first, or at least the ranger service. She’s strong, and she’s resourceful. If she’s telling us to wait then we have to wait.”

Sam thinks hard, so hard Hannah can almost hear her mind whirring like a machine. Her hands are on her hips and her brows are drawn tightly together. She looks so tired.

“Then we can’t tell the others the truth.”

Hannah blinks. That was unexpected. “What do you mean? She asked us to bring them.”

Sam nods. “You’re right, and I’m sorry to even say it, but they’ll never believe you Hannah. Even with the letter, it’s not enough. They wouldn’t come back, especially if they thought it might be dangerous.” She frowns, looking at the letter again. “It seems like it is.”

The pit in Hannah’s heart returns, the bad feeling she’s had since she walked through the front door.

“So, what do we do?”

Sam bites her lip and presses her hand to her chest, a nervous habit. “I think,” she says before pausing to sigh heavily. “I think we need to lie.”

Now that is a surprise. Hannah is trying to think of what to say, but the bad feeling is almost overwhelming now, and she thinks she might vomit. Everything is boiling inside.

Hannah swallows hard, trying to force it down. “To everyone?”

Sam looks at the letter. “She said to tell me and Josh, but—”

“Josh,” Hannah echoes. Suddenly, the stone in her heart explodes, and the bad feeling is swimming in the air all around her. She rockets to her feet. “Josh! We need to find Josh, _now_.”

Sam looks confused, but there isn’t time to explain. When she whips her door open, the familiar, rusty smell of blood wafts in. Fuck. She thunders down the hallway. Sam is somewhere behind her, calling her name, but the sound is far away and distorted. All she can see is the bathroom door at the end of the hall.

Hannah tugs on the handle. Locked. The smell of blood is stronger now, much stronger. Sam catches up as Hannah reaches for the emergency key on top of the door frame.

“Oh, fuck,” Sam says under her breath, putting her hand over her nose.

The door swings open and Hannah feels her heart plummet through the floor, and she’s frozen. Josh is in the tub, fully clothed. The water is dark red, and his skin is pale. His eyes are open. He does not blink. His eyes are open.

The world moves, but Hannah and Josh stay in the same place. Sam is shouting, she’s on her knees at the lip of the tub, her clothes are bloody and wet, she pulls his body out of the water and Hannah is sure, _so sure_ that he’s gone, gone, gone until his eyes slide to meet hers and he gasps.

“Hannah, please!” Sam cries, ripping a towel off the rack with such force she sends the metal bar clattering to the ground. Hannah is thrust back into her body and grabs her phone, dialing 911. When she looks back up, Josh’s eyes are closed.

The operator barely speaks before she’s shouting into the receiver. “My brother, he’s dying, you have to help us!”

“Hannah, give it to me,” Sam says, deadly calm. “Come hold him.”

Hannah relents, as if she has any other choice. Sam steps into the hallway and Hannah cradles her older brother in her arms, pressing the towel to his wrists with such force her knuckles go white.

The boiling feeling becomes venom.

“You idiot,” Hannah hisses, tears and snot dripping down her face and falling onto Josh’s shoulder. “She’s alive, she’s alive!”

Josh’s head rolls back, and the shock she sees in them seems too animated for his lifeless form.

“What?” He croaks, blinking fast.

Hannah takes a shuddering breath. “Beth is alive, Josh.”

Josh sobs and closes his eyes.

* * *

The last angry winds of winter lash at Beth’s exposed cheekbones. Jack didn’t have much for her to wear, but she appreciates his thick military jacket she cinched with a belt at her waist and the thick wool scarf she wraps around her entire head to keep her warm.

It is the dead of night, and they are hunting.

Jack stops her, one hand on his flamethrower and the other in front of her. They stand, completely still, for several moments before Jack carefully nods towards a massive fallen tree. There, between the branches, Beth sees it: a flash of pale, mottled skin stretched long over disfigured bones.

“Slowly,” he cautions. “Raise your rifle.”

She obeys, trying not to shiver.

“Get him in your sights,” Jack mutters, still as the grave. “Keep him there.”

A month ago, Beth was dangling off the edge of a cliff, clinging to an exposed root for her own life and for her sister’s. Jack’s gloved hand hauled her over the edge.

She dropped Hannah. She watched her fall into the mines. She heard the crack as her sister hit the stone below and screamed, but Jack yanked her to her feet and told her to run.

“Hannah!” she cried as she did, wiping tears from her eyes and winding her way through the woods. Jack was right behind her, shouting directions and blasting fire at whatever it was behind them.

She knew now. She knew everything, about the Wendigos, about the danger she and her family were in during the winter.

It all made sense when he explained it to her. It was why she needed to stay missing, at least for a while. At least until she learned how to keep her family safe.


End file.
